Charles Dickens: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby

CHAPTER 31: Of Ralph Nickleby and Newman Noggs (continued)

'I shall scream if you don't compose yourself, Mr Noggs,' said Miss La Creevy; 'I'm sure I shan't be able to help it.'

'Never mind,' rejoined Newman, darting violently to and fro. 'He's coming up tonight: I wrote to tell him. He little thinks I know; he little thinks I care. Cunning scoundrel! he don't think that. Not he, not he. Never mind, I'll thwart him--I, Newman Noggs. Ho, ho, the rascal!'

Lashing himself up to an extravagant pitch of fury, Newman Noggs jerked himself about the room with the most eccentric motion ever beheld in a human being: now sparring at the little miniatures on the wall, and now giving himself violent thumps on the head, as if to heighten the delusion, until he sank down in his former seat quite breathless and exhausted.

'There,' said Newman, picking up his hat; 'that's done me good. Now I'm better, and I'll tell you all about it.'

It took some little time to reassure Miss La Creevy, who had been almost frightened out of her senses by this remarkable demonstration; but that done, Newman faithfully related all that had passed in the interview between Kate and her uncle, prefacing his narrative with a statement of his previous suspicions on the subject, and his reasons for forming them; and concluding with a communication of the step he had taken in secretly writing to Nicholas.

Though little Miss La Creevy's indignation was not so singularly displayed as Newman's, it was scarcely inferior in violence and intensity. Indeed, if Ralph Nickleby had happened to make his appearance in the room at that moment, there is some doubt whether he would not have found Miss La Creevy a more dangerous opponent than even Newman Noggs himself.

'God forgive me for saying so,' said Miss La Creevy, as a wind-up to all her expressions of anger, 'but I really feel as if I could stick this into him with pleasure.'